Tuesday, November 8, 2011

FREE WILL versus PREDESTINATION part 2

                                            Here read Psalms 147:5

God, who is omniscient and omnipotent, can by an act of His will put all knowledge of a person's future choices outside of His foreknowledge when He grants free will to an individual. In other words, God holds the power to forget whatever He wants to forget.

Psalms 147:5, applying an exact reading, does not state that God has infinite knowledge but infinite understanding. The Hebrew word for "understanding" means that God has infinite intelligence, reason and wisdom. In other words, God has an infinite understanding of all that is good and righteous. Since evil, by its very nature is unintelligent, unreasonable and unwise, a holy God, by His very nature, cannot understand it. While God can make Himself forget whatever He wants to forget, this self-limitation of His knowledge does not preclude Him from having infinite understanding of all that is holy.

                            Here read Ezekiel 28:15 II Thessalonians 2:7

Evidence for this point of view comes from the Biblical account of God's creation of Lucifer. God created Lucifer to be the light-bearer, perfect in beauty and wisdom, and secondary to God alone. And yet, the Bible(KJV) simply states that iniquity was found in him. This account implies that suddenly one day evil was simply there within him. God does not know from where it came or how it works. God knows that evil exists, but He knows nothing about its mechanisms. God must be innocent because He created Adam in His own image, and Adam was created innocent. This truth is consistent with the nature of a holy God. God must be absolutely pure. How can He know anything about evil except that it exists?

Man knows something about the mechanisms of evil since he can create it. Evil is not a complete mystery to man. Therefore, when the Apostle Paul wrote about the "mystery of iniquity" in II Thessalonians 2:7, he meant that evil is a mystery to God. This fact accounts for Jesus' amazement at the doubt that He found in His disciples even after they had seen Him perform great miracles.

Apparently, Lucifer was the first being to whom God granted the gift of free will. God did this, not only to test Lucifer but also to test Love itself. God tested Himself because "God is Love." God already knew that Love is the greatest, most beautiful, glorious and holy Being that can possibly exist. But God wanted to prove the infinite value of Love to His creations by having His greatest creation freely choose to love Him in return.

Because God is loving and faithful; that is, He believes in those whom He loves, and He is innocent as well, He could not imagine that Lucifer would choose anything other than to love Him in return. God did not have to know the other choices that Lucifer could make. God had full confidence that Lucifer would choose Him.

However, just as Jesus was perplexed about His disciples lack of faith, imagine God's shock and disappointment upon learning that Lucifer had rebelled against Him and wanted to take His place. Even though God was grieved beyond imagination, He fought to defend His kingdom, and cast Lucifer and his followers out of heaven to the earth where he became Satan, the god of this world.

                           Here read Habakkuk 1:13 Romans 3:9-12

These events raise the baffling question: What is sin and evil? We humans are fallen as well. What is this strange magnetic and hypnotic force that draws us, like a moth to the flame, to ruin and self-destruction? What is so exciting about being drawn to meaningless and empty pleasures? What is this awful pride that compels us to greed and power? It remains a mystery to God and man, although man knows more about it than God does.

One thing is certain. Evil is destructive and destruction leads to nothingness. Sin and evil are allied with nothingness. To ascent that God knows nothing about nothingness except that it exists is the same as to ascent that nothing limits God's knowledge of everything that is good and holy. Sin and evil do not limit God's omniscience and omnipotence in the least.

So, how does all this apply to the question of free will versus predestination? Simply this. When God causes a fallen human to hear or read the gospel of the sacrifice of Christ, He brings that person under the conviction of the Holy Spirit and makes him or her realize that he or she is a lost sinner in need of a Savior. At that moment, that lost sinner knows that he or she has a choice to make. He or she may accept Christ as Savior and be saved forever, or he or she may reject Christ and remain in a lost condition. Because God is absolute Love, He always expects the person under conviction to make the right choice. Thus, in a way, God does not consider the wrong choice to be a real possibility. To God, the only true choice, the only possible choice, is the right choice. So when a lost sinner accepts Christ as Savior, God receives that person by His grace considering that person to have been His son or daughter for and from all eternity. This causes the free will of man and the predestination ordained by God to be in perfect harmony.

This perfect harmony between free will and predestination may actually be reflected in some of the physical laws that govern our universe. Certain physicists have discovered that the behavior of sub-atomic particles are governed by laws they call quantum mechanics. Einstein called these laws "spooky," and they are spooky for a very good reason. For instance, the smallest element of light is called a photon, but even one photon is neither a particle; that is, matter, nor is it a light wave; that is, energy, but exists as both at the same time. The photon can become one or the other only at a time when a physicist measures it.
This means that if a physicist measures a particular photon coming from a distant star or galaxy as a particle, then his or her measurement actually determines that photon to have been a particle from all eternity. Similarly, if a physicist decides to measure another photon coming from the same star or galaxy as a light wave, then that photon remains a light wave from all eternity.

This discovery has completely befuddled materialistic scientists. To them, matter and energy are fixed as such and human consciousness can do nothing to alter that fixation. Yet, by a simple decision to measure a sub-atomic element as being matter or energy, a scientist can determine its fixation from all eternity.

In a similar manner, God can wait for a lost sinner under conviction to either accept or reject Christ as Savior, but once an absolute decision has been made, then it becomes fixed as actually being that way for and from all eternity

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